Love In A Hurry

I love those super-fast jobs where you think you can't possibly squeeze it in, but you say yes because you love the sound of it, and THEN they bring the deadline forward to 'the middle of the week' rather than 'the end of the week'.

Sometimes the sheer speed I have to work at makes for a rush-job which, despite initial nerves about 'fitting it in', has the strange effect of making me a bit cavalier about the outcome. It's as if the brain says 'Well. They've given you three days, and you've already got ton of things to do, so you'll just have to do your best and they'll get what they're given'. It sort of...releases the tension, and relaxes the hands. Plus, there's no time to get nervous about it - I just have to bash on in.

Brown Thomas in Ireland are running this illustration for their Spring campaign, with window displays and ads, to coincide with Valentine's day. I'd been doing a lot of my more detailed work lately (here) and this job just happened to require exactly that. The letters are 8" high and all done by hand 'in one take' with no digital fudgery at all (except to change the colour to pink for the purposes of this blog!)

It also dovetailed nicely with an illustration for the Natural History Museum, coming soon to a blog near you.

This was, therefore, a joy to do. I made some of the flowers up but in the main, these all come up in Spring. On a dingy wet winter's day, this was just the tonic. Fine nibs, big paper, music on, tongue out...and relax.